Thursday, November 17, 2011

art afternoon

(Milan) Last weekend A. and I spent the afternoon at Hanger Bicocca and Fabrica del Vapore. Our first stop, was the Hanger to see the "from here to ear (version 15)" exhibition by French visual artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. The space was filled with electric guitars and zebra finches that create beauty without even being aware of it. The birds create the audio pieces, simply by flying around and eating the seeds that are placed on the instruments. Personally, I felt it was a bit contrived, as the birds are contained in the space by nets so they do not escape which for me, was distracting and upsetting. But none the less it was interesting to see and hear. Although, I would be more interested to see this exhibit set up in the birds natural environment. Curious to know what others thought. Have you seen the show?

Next, we headed to see Anish Kapoor's site-specific installation "Dirty Corner" that fully occupies the “Cathedral” of the Fabbrica del Vapore. The work consists of a huge steel long tunnel about 60 meters long and 8 meters high in which visitors can enter. We stepped into the tunnel and the deeper into the structure we went it progressively became darker and darker until there was no light. You start to lose your perception of space, which forced us to use other senses to guide us through. We stopped a few times to look back as the light from the entrance illuminated the steps we had already taken, giving us comfort to understand where we were at. But as soon as we turned around to to continue on our way, we could not see a thing, it was pitch black. We couldn't even see our hands as we held them up inches away from our face. We loved it so much we walked through three times and in addition, watched a short film on Kapoor's work. Personally for me, it was a very therapeutic and symbolic piece. I highly recommend a visit. To fully understand the size of this piece see here.